


lost without you

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:21:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23121649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Sinara and Kasius are exiled - not great, but not terrible, considering the alternative. The real problem: they're send to different exiles.
Relationships: Kasius/Sinara (Marvel)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	lost without you

Sinara watches the last of the workers trail out of the building after the rickety elevator’s spit them out, their clothes stained from the mines, their shoulders hunched from the work.

She wonders if Garron has a sense of humour after all, or if it’s just coincident her exile has brought her back to the mines she once thought she’d be doomed to, though she never expected herself to be the hated supervisor, whose back the workers whisper insults behind. She wonders, idly, if they’ve given her a nickname yet, the way they had Crooked Cray. She wonders if any of them remember growing up with her. She wonders if it even counts as growing up, when she was taken away at eight years old, far from being done with growing.

She wonders those things, the way she has far too often already, because it’s easier to wonder about meaningless, faceless people than to let herself wonder about Kasius, about where he’s ended up, about how he might be dealing with his own exile, about whether he meant it when he said,“I’ll find you.”

About whether it might not be easier if he hadn’t. If he’s realised involving himself with her was a mistake, now that she’s gone, the way she never realised quite how deep her feelings truly run until she’s lost every chance to respond to his whispered confessions in the dead of night with anything but fond disbelief.

It hurts less to imagine he’s angry with her for dooming them both to exile by striking down his generals. If he’s living every day with that same hollow ache in his chest, with that same chill that will not leave her bones, would a quick death on the battlefield not have been the kinder thing?

Not that it matters. What is done is done, and she would not change it even if given the chance.

He’s out there, somewhere, lost to her but breathing, and that is more important than a heart that feels like it’s been cleaved in two, even if it’s not just hers but Kasius’, too.

* * *

Kasius smiles and quips his way through yet another tedious dinner, haggling over prices for Inhumans that he cares nothing for, prodding for information his guests might not even have.

He swore to Sinara that he would find her again, somehow, and he intends to keep that promise; he prays to all the gods he does not believe in that she is out there to be found. He takes solace in knowing that his father would surely not spare him news of her death.

So he laughs at Ponarian’s joke and forces himself not to look to his side, where Sinara should be but isn’t to exchange a glance with him that says what they both think of the guest, and he gives him a handful of Terrans, free of charge, because he might come back with rumours of Sinara’s whereabouts next time. That is much more valuable than the price the Terrans, rare wares that they are in the universe now, will fetch on Kitson, or wherever else Ponarian seeks to trade them.

“Be glad you get to live,”General Krenyk had told him, not unkindly, when sending him off to his exile, ignoring all questions of where Sinara would be taken.

He should be glad to be living. It feels more like surviving without her, just breathing for the sake of it, waiting and plotting and hoping, surviving until he can find her and start living again.

* * *

There is a shean of glitter on her skin at all times now. The mines leave their mark on even the luckiest of their workers. It settles in her lungs, too, she knows, from the clumps of blood her parents spit into kerchiefs back when she still had parents.

The coughing sickness hasn’t gotten to her yet, it builds up slow over time, even slower for the supervisors who don’t go deep into the tunnels.

She doesn’t think about the hacking sounds that kept her awake as a child when she looks at the shimmering powders coating her clothes, trapped under her nails and in her hair.

She thinks that it’s pretty. She thinks of the white speckles Kasius used to - maybe still does - painstakingly dot across his face. She thinks of the freckles under the coat of make-up.

She counted them with the same concentration she is not counting the days with now. She does not need to know how long it’s been since she could breathe freely, the tightness in her chest unrelated to any sickness.

She knows, anyway, that it has been two hundred and fifty one days since Kasius last kissed her. Since she last thought she might be alright.

* * *

Kasius cannot sleep in the bed that is too big for him alone. He is cold without her there next to him, no matter how many blankets he piles on top of himself. The coldness runs deeper. Every beat of his heart drives the ice through his veins.

He has yet to find any sign of her but he writes her letters upon letters, all the things he wants to tell her and can’t. He writes until his hand starts cramping up, and then until he falls asleep, slumped over his desks and his letters and all the “I love you”s he didn’t get to say.

He should have told her every time he thought those words. The few occasions when he dared to, when she was half-asleep at least, seem wasted opportunities now.

The letters and all their confessions are kept in a box under the bed he does not use, neatly folded and waiting to be send.

He hopes she has forgotten all about him. Missing someone so much that every day seems like years of torture is not something he wishes on her.

Selfishly, he hopes she misses him, too. That way, when he finally finds her, he will be alright again, and so will she.

If she’s out of his reach forever, she might as well have let his generals end his misery.

* * *

The package is handed to her like it might explode any second by a soldier who she has never met and who hurries away before she can ask any questions.

She tucks it into the inside of her jacket where it sits, heavy though it barely weighs anything at all, until her shift passes and she can lock herself away into the little room she won’t call home.

There’s a communicator in the box and she knows who sent it before she even unfolds the note that came with it.  _ I’m sorry it took so long. _

She smiles. She’s almost surprised she still remembers how to.

There’s a flood of messages already waiting when she keys in the pin she doesn’t need to be told to activate the communicator.

The date they met, in that dive bar near the barracks on Carvid, where his father had sent him to be rid of him for a while, written by the Carvidian calendar. A secret code, of sorts.

A love declaration, of sorts.

* * *

“I miss you so much more than the miles between us,”Kasius writes as he works on the encryption that will allow them to speak via video. A lifeline to her is worth so much already but seeing her face would be so, so sweet.

“Sap,”Sinara writes back.

Kasius smiles, warmth blossoming in his chest, spreading out through his veins with every beat of his heart.

He knows she misses him too.

But they’re one step closer to being reunited.

He still barely sleeps in the too empty bed but when he falls asleep on the letters he writes her, it is with a smile. There is so much he wants to say that he can’t let her know right now, when they must limit their conversation to what is most necessary. The transmissions from the Lighthouse might be watched; Kasius knows his father well enough to realise that.

They’ve already dared to say too much but not telling her how much he misses her is unthinkable. All else, for now, has to wait in his letters, still unsend in their box.

He will get them to her eventually - or better yet, get to tell her all the things that ink and paper can’t adequately convey.

He misses that soft little smile that steals its way onto her face when he tells her how much she means to him. He’s ready to take the risk and find out if he’ll be rewarded with it, too, when he doesn’t confine such confessions to half dark rooms and the middle of the night.

* * *

The bed is, of course, the same narrow thing, with a hard mattress and a thin blanket, but curling up under the blanket with the communicator in her hand makes it feel more comfortable, almost homey.

There’s a dozen messages waiting for her, almost entirely about Kasius’ various plans to reunited them. He’s restraining himself, Sinara can tell. There’s danger of discovery in every unnecessary message and Kasius likes to say so many unnecessary things.

Unnecessary, sweet, entertaining, clever things. She’s looking forward to hearing him babble on and on, hopefully some time soon.

“What’s on your mind?,”his last message reads.

She’s already typed in her answer before she can think about it, then stares at the three letters and shakes her head at her own maudlin sentimentalities.

She’s near as bad as Kasius, these days.

She deletes the ‘you’ she’d typed and instead gives her opinion on his various schemes.

That’s more important. More important even than the things he refrains from saying to keep their contact better hidden.

And maybe she can tell him in person, now that she’s ready to respond to him in kind.

* * *

There is another hundred and twenty five days of waiting ahead of Sinara when the rumours reach her.

The Terrans rebelled, the base has been blown to pieces. Everyone there is presumed dead.

She shoulders her way through the chattering crowd, stumbles down corridors until she makes it to her chambers, shaking fingers unwrapping the pillowcase that keeps her communicator safe. Safer than just leaving it out, anyway.

But the dust that’s worming its way deeper into her lungs every day has found the circuits, too. The communicator won’t turn on.

Her heartbeat pounding louder than anything she’s eve heard, her hands clammy, her mouth so, so dry, Sinara blinks against the sting at the corners of her eyes and starts taking the communicator apart, cleaning every delicate part, setting them back together.

Like she can set the Terran outpost back together if she can do it for the communicator.

She doesn’t hear the knock on her door. Doesn’t even register when it opens.

“Sinara,”Kasius says, and she whips around.

She stares at him; he stands there with open arms and a wide smile.

“There was an opportunity that really needed to be taken,”he says, a little apologetically, eyes lingering on the communicator for a split second, on all the parts strewn around.

She gets to her feet and lunges towards him, half a mind to kiss him, half a mind to punch him for the fright he gave her.

She does neither.

Instead she sinks into his waiting arms and buries her face against his neck.

“I love you,”she says, just loud enough for him to hear.

Kasius pulls her closer and presses a kiss to the top of her head.“I love you, too.”

* * *

Kasius is presumed dead. Sinara is not likely to be missed. The ship they steal might be but they tear out any trackers before starting off in search of a new exile.

One for the both of them together, this time.

They don’t mind exile that way.


End file.
